We can beat our heads over and over again with relevant stats pertaining to the Denver Broncos’ offense and the Seattle Seahawks‘ defense. We can look at Peyton Manning’s record-setting regular season. Heck, we can even look at how dominant the Seahawk’s vaunted Legion of Boom secondary has been throughout the season. All of those could play – and should – play a part on the eventual outcome of Super Bowl XLVIII.
But none of them can be considered as the biggest factor leading up to the game.
That distinction falls on the shoulders of Mother Nature.
When the geniuses over at the NFL decided to give Super Bowl XLVIII to Met Life Stadium in New Jersey, the most obvious question on everyone’s mind was “what’s the weather going to be like on an outdoor stadium in the middle of winter?” It was – and still is – a fair question, one that nobody still has an answer to.
But the message was sent: the biggest football game of the year is going to be played in the elements, or as commissioner Roger Goodell put it back when the announcement was first made, “where it’s supposed to be”.
That’s all well and good if you’re sitting in the comfortable confines of your own couch. But if you’re a Bronco or a Seahawk and you’re playing in the actual game, the uncertainty on what kind of weather will greet you when you walk out the tunnel is turning into the biggest wild card that neither coaching staff from both teams have any idea how to handle.
If the weather cooperates and hovers in the 40’s or 50’s with minimal winds, then that should be ideal conditions for playing football. But what if the temperature drops to the teens, or worse, blankets in the stadium in the kind blizzard-like conditions that the Northeast has been seeing on an alarmingly frequent basis this season? What if the expected precipitation ends up being a combination of snow, rain, sleet, and ice? Then what?
Las Vegas sportsbooks are just as concerned about the weather as anybody else. For one, it’s hard to pin down how both teams will play when the conditions hit the fan. History suggests that the game turns into a power football/defensive struggle affair when conditions are less than ideal. That should favor the Seahawks, and that was a reason why a lot of books opened with Seattle being the short favorites. Then everybody and their grandmama pounded the Broncos, forcing the books to instead make Denver the short favorites.
Should snow fall down furiously and turn the game into some kind of winter wonderland, then you can pretty much throw all of your handicapping studies out the window and the game, for a lack of a better description, turns into an all-out battle of attrition. If you want a precedent on what to expect, look no further than Week 14 of the current NFL season, which featured some of the craziest finishes you’ll find in the league. And a lot of that happened after the players had to spend almost the entire first half trying to get used to the conditions.
Something like that could happen in Super Bowl XLVIII and neither the Broncos, the Seahawks, the oddsmakers, and all the bettors can do anything about it.
At this point, we’re all at the mercy of Mother Nature’s mood come game time.
